Release Date: 12/10/21; In Theaters – Limited; 12/22/21; In Theaters – Wide Genre:Drama Rating:Not Yet Rated Director:Denzel Washington Studio(s):BRON Studios, Escape Artists, Outlier Society, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), Columbia Pictures.
Cast: Michael B. Jordan (Charles Monroe King), Chanté Adams (Dana Canedy), Robert Wisdom, Johnny M. Wu, Jalon Christian, Tamara Tunie.
Story:Directed by Denzel Washington and starring Michael B. Jordan, A Journal For Jordan is based on the true story of Sergeant Charles Monroe King, a soldier deployed to Iraq who begins to keep a journal of love and advice for his infant son. Back at home, senior New York Times editor Dana Canedy revisits the story of her unlikely, life-altering relationship with King and his enduring devotion to her and their child. A sweeping account of a once-in-a-lifetime love, the film is a powerful reminder of the importance of family. Based on the book by Dana Canedy. Sources: sonypictures.com.
Release Date:2/4/20; Blu-Ray (Original Theatrical Release Date: 8/3/1990) Genre: Drama Rating:R Director:Spike Lee Studio(s): Universal Pictures, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, KL Studio Classics. Running Time: 130 mins.
Cast:Denzel Washington (Bleek Gilliam), Spike Lee (Giant), Wesley Snipes (Shadow Henderson), Joie Lee (Indigo Downes), Cynda Williams (Clarke Bentancourt), Giancarlo Esposito (Left Hand Lacey), Bill Nunn (Bottom Hammer), Jeff “Tain” Watts (Rhythm Jones), Dick Anthony Williams (Big Stop Williams), Abbey Lincoln (Lillian Gilliam), John Turturro (Moe Flatbush), Nicholas Turturro (Josh Flatbush), Robin Harris (Butterbean Jones), Samuel L. Jackson (Madlock), Leonard L. Thomas (Rod), Charlie Murphy (Eggy), Coati Mundi (Roberto), Diahann Carroll (Jazz Club Singer), Rubén Blades (Petey).
Details: It follows a period in the life of fictional jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam (played by Washington) as a series of bad decisions result in his jeopardizing both his relationships and his playing career. The film focuses on themes of friendship, loyalty, honesty, cause-and-effect, and ultimately salvation. It features the music of the Branford Marsalis quartet and Terence Blanchard on trumpet, who also plays for the Bleek Gilliam character.
Story: Brooklyn, New York in 1969. A group of boys walk up to Bleek Gilliam’s brownstone and ask him to play baseball with them. Bleek’s mother insists that he continue his trumpet lesson. His father is concerned that Bleek will grow up to be a sissy, and a family argument ensues. Bleek continues playing his trumpet, and his friends go away.
Over twenty years later, an adult Bleek performs on the trumpet at a busy nightclub with his jazz band, The Bleek Quintet. Giant, the band’s manager, advises Bleek to stop allowing his saxophone player Shadow Henderson to grandstand with long solos.
The next morning Bleek wakes up with his girlfriend, Indigo Downes. She leaves to go to class, while he meets his father for a game of catch, telling him that while he likes Indigo, he likes other women too and is not ready to make a commitment. Later in the day while he is practicing, another woman named Clarke Bentancourt visits him. She suggests that he fire Giant as manager; he suggests that they make love (which he refers to as “mo’ better”). She bites his lip and he becomes upset about it, saying, “I make my living with my lips.”
Giant meets with his bookie to place bets. He meets Bleek at the club with the rest of the band, except for the pianist, Left Hand Lacey, who arrives late with his French girlfriend and is scolded by Giant. Later Giant goes to the club owners’ office, points out how busy the club has been since Bleek and his band began playing there, and unsuccessfully attempts to renegotiate their contract. Giant meets his bookie the next morning, who is concerned that Giant is getting too deep in debt. Giant shrugs it off, and places several new bets. He then stops at Shadow’s home to drop off a record. Shadow confides in him that he is cheating on his girlfriend. This leads to the next scene where Bleek is in bed with Clarke, and she asks him to let her sing a number at the club with his band. He declines her request.
Bleek and Giant fend off requests from the other members of the band for a raise due to the band’s success. Bleek asks the club owners for more money, which they refuse, reminding him that it was Giant who locked him into the current deal. That night both Clarke and Indigo come to the club to see Bleek. They are wearing the same style dress, which Bleek had purchased for them both. Bleek attempts to work it out with each girl, but they are both upset with him, and though he sleeps with them each again, they leave him (after he calls each of them by the other’s name). However, tension rises with Shadow who has feelings for Clarke.
Bleek and Giant go for a bike ride, where Bleek insists that Giant do a better job managing. Giant promises to do so, and then asks Bleek for a loan to pay his gambling debts. Bleek declines, and later Giant is apprehended by two loan sharks who demand payment. Giant can’t pay and gets his fingers broken. Later Giant tells Bleek that he injured himself, but Bleek doesn’t believe him. Giant asks the other band members for money, and Left loans him five hundred dollars. When loan sharks stake out Giant’s home, he goes to Bleek for a place to stay. Bleek agrees to help him raise the money but fires him as manager.
Bleek misses both Indigo and Clarke, but Clarke has begun a new relationship with Shadow. Bleek finds out about it and fires Shadow. The loan sharks find Giant at the club, take him outside, and beat him while Bleek plays. Bleek goes to intervene and gets beaten up as wel l. Additionally, one loan shark takes Bleek’s trumpet and smacks him across the face with it. This permanently injures his lip, making him unable to play the trumpet.
Months later, Bleek reunites with Giant, who has gotten a job as a doorman and has stopped gambling. He drops in to see Shadow and Clarke, who are now performing together with the rest of Bleek’s former band. Shadow invites him on stage, and they play together. Bleek still has scars on his lips and is unable to play well. He walks off the stage, gives his trumpet to Giant, and goes directly to Indigo’s house. She is angry with him because he hasn’t contacted her in over a year. She agrees to take him back when he begs her to save his life.
A montage flashes through their wedding, the birth of their son, Miles, and Bleek teaching Miles to play the trumpet. In the final scene, Miles is ten years old and wants to go outside to play with his friends but Indigo wants him to finish his trumpet lessons. However, unlike in the opening scene, Bleek relents and allows his son go play with friends. Source(s): Wikipedia; IMDB.
Release Date: 12/11/18; DVD Genre:Drama/Thriller Rating: R Director:Antoine Fuqua Studio(s):Columbia Pictures Corporation, Escape Artists, Fuqua Films, Lonetree Entertainment, Mace Neufeld Productions, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), ZHIV Productions Running Time: 121 mins. Cast:Denzel Washington (Robert McCall), Ashton Sanders (Miles Whittaker), Pedro Pascal (Dave York), Orson Bean (Sam Rubinstein), Bill Pullman (Brian Plummer), Melissa Leo (Susan Plummer).
Story: Sequel to the 2014 film The Equalizer, which was based on the TV series of the same name. If you have a problem and there is nowhere else to turn, the mysterious and elusive Robert McCall will deliver the vigilante justice you seek. This time, however, McCall’s past cuts especially close to home when thugs kill Susan Plummer — his best friend and former colleague. Now out for revenge, McCall must take on a crew of highly trained assassins who’ll stop at nothing to destroy him. Source: Google.
Release Date: 11/17/17; In Theaters Genre: Drama/Crime Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 129 mins. Director: Dan Gilroy Studios: Bron Creative, Cross Creek Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment
Cast: Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel), Colin Farrell (George), Carmen Ejogo (Maya)
Story: Concerns an idealistic defense attorney with strong morals, who is dedicated to helping those who are socially oppressed. He’s offered a job at a prestigious law firm after the death of his longtime partner, but he then takes on a case that has life-altering repercussions. Source: Screen Rant.
Release Date: 12/25/16 (In Theaters) Genre:Drama Rating: Unknown Running Time:139 mins. Director: Denzel Washington Studio: Bron Studios, MACRO, Paramount Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions
Cast: Denzel Washington (Troy), Viola Davis (Rose), Mykelti Williamson (Gabriel), Russell Hornsby (Grimm), Stephen Henderson (Bono), Saniyya Sidney (Raynell) Jovan Adepo (Cory).
Story: In Fences, Denzel Washington returns to the director’s chair for the fourth time in his career. It’s based on a play by August Wilson that won a Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Awards, revolving around a sanitation worker in Pittsburgh who is haunted by his dream as a young man to become a professional baseball player, at a time before the major leagues were integrated. Washington starred with Viola Davis in a Broadway revival of the play in 2010, which won Tony Awards for both of them. The two are reprising their roles as Troy and Rose in the movie.Joining Washington and Davis in front of the camera are: Mykelti Williamson, Russell Hornsby, Jovan Adepo and Saniyya Sidne.
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Details:Back in 1987, Wilson’s play was set up at Paramount as a potential vehicle for Eddie Murphy, who was looking for a serious role. He had his eye on a part as the older son of Troy Maxson, currently played by Washington in both a stage version of the play and the movie. By December 1988, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, now extinct, had Murphy rewriting his own character, which, according to the paper, he thought “came off too wimpy in the play.” Eventually, he left the writing to Wilson, but the project became tangled in the playwright’s insistence that Fences, which deals with racial barriers and intricate family relations, should have a black director. “Until the industry is ready to hire a black to direct De Niro or Redford, blacks should at least be able to direct their own experience,” he said in January 1990, at a conference sponsored by the California Afro-American Museum. “White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of black Americans,” Wilson added.
Actually, Paramount was trying to accommodate. A black executive worked on the film and by 1992 Paramount was in talks with John Singleton, who was then riding high on his success with Boyz N The Hood. Ultimately, Singleton bowed out, as did Murphy. Produce Scott Rudin appears to have gotten involved in about 1997, when he was still a powerhouse producer at Paramount. Eventually, Rudin sent Wilson’s script to Washington, as a potential director. Washington, according to people who have tracked the project through the years, said yes; but he wanted to revive it first on Broadway, which he did. Wilson died in 2005, but his one-man campaign for a black-directed film became something of a movement.
Fences which opens nationwide on Christmas Day, is beginning to look like a serious rival to Nate Parker’s The Birth Of A Nation along with Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and perhaps others to carry the torch for black cinema. Sources: Shadow and Act; Movies.com; Deadline.
Status: Development Status Unknown Release Date: TBA Genre: Biography Rating: Not Available Studio: Not Available Director: Not Available Cast: Denzel Washington (Thelonius Monk, rumored)
Story: A rumored biopic based on the life of jazz great Thelonious Monk.
Details: On February 13, 2012, The Playlist reported, in an interview with The Observer, [Denzel] Washington reveals he has ambitions to play jazz legend Thelonious Monk, has a script in place, and says that “I’m talking about it more, so maybe I’m talking myself into it.” Monk, was the pianist and composer behind standards like “Round Midnight” and “Straight No Chaser,” whose inventive, idiosyncratic style helped to make him the second most recorded jazz artist in history. This isn’t the first time that Washington’s been linked to the role; back in 2007, El Cantante director Leon Ichaso told MTV that he wanted Washington or Wesley Snipes to play the musician in a biopic, but it’s unclear whether Ichaso is still involved, or if the actor is considering making this his third directorial effort, following Antwone Fisher and The Great Debaters.
Playlist goes on to say, given Washington’s age, the film might focus on the later stages of Monk’s life when he was plagued with mental health issues. Source: The Playlist.